Tanqueray Most Stylish Man: Matt Smith

The winner of the Tanqueray Most Stylish Man award of 2011 is startled that he and the Doctor are style icons. "Do you think the Doctor is a snappy dresser?" he asks, chuckling.

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Today, Smith is dressed in a black shirt and long black jacket and the trademark bow tie. That bow tie. Was that sartorial twist him or the Doctor? "That was all me." Smith confirms. "The producers groaned when I got it out, and then I put it on, and they said, 'Yes: that.' "Speaking of the Doctors style," the 28-year-old says suddenly, " I did take a pair of his shoes." He raises his leg to reveal a just-scuffed-enough pair of black hobnailed boots. Nice lift; he's obviously got an eye for these things.

Playing Dr Who is like playing James Bond: you've got to completely become the character. Matt Smith, the latest to pilot the Tardis, has utterly become the Doctor, and the Doctor has been remade in his image.

Like his character, Smith talks with his whole body; and he talks, and he talks and he talks, a beat-poet stream of consciousness, as if there is music only he can hear. "Yeah, man.

Yeah." He moves constantly: even when he's sitting still, his arms are waving expansively and widely - often to the point of danger for any nearby glasses, vases or people - or else he's tightly gripping and releasing his hands. His sentences pile upon each other, unfinished. "...the Doctor sort of - I'm not sure if you've seen the first episode where he chooses his costume; it's just him going down and picking up stuff, from these lockers in a hospital, and I like the idea that the Doctor is - everything is done in a moment of instinct, without any consideration..."

Photography by PA Photos

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Isn't it exhausting, having all of that energy bursting out all over the place? "Steven Moffatt [Doctor Who writer and executive producer] said to me once that one of his greatest skills is that he's able to relax; that he can just switch off, and I think that perhaps that's something that I need to learn."

But that's been scary. "The first couple of months were so intense... and it was only really with hindsight that I realised the pressure was - what's the word I'm looking for?" Smith takes a rare breath, "Apparent, around, evident, there in the air, in my bedroom when I went to sleep, when I woke up, when I was in the car, in the music I was listening to..."

He's spent the past summer in LA, beginning in June with a 24-hour play in Santa Monica alongside Eva Mendes and Jenna Elfman.

His Doctor has amassed a huge following Stateside, and he made the jump into feature films when he starred as Christopher Isherwood in the applauded BBC biopic Christopher And His Kind. "I loved doing Christopher And His Kind," he says, "and in terms of style, it was really eye-opening. I'm gonna get a Thirties suit made, one of the check ones, with the big trousers pleated at the top, with a waistcoat, because they don't make them like that any more, the full shebang." Another pause. His head moves to the beat. "They're cool, man."

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Matt Smith's Man of the Year: "It was going to be Christopher Samba of Blackburn Rovers. But since it looks like he'll defect to Arsenal he's lost out to James Corden. Why James?

He did a play, some films, wrote a show, started writing a book and had a baby. He made me laugh a lot on the Dr Who set and knows a lot about suits and football. West Ham went down, so he gets the sympathy vote, too."